PE Luther

ERHAPS it will be of interest to our Leaguers to read and learn something regarding the manufacture and perfecting of the beautiful cut glass articles which are so often admired in the showrooms and windows of stores and in the homes of many who can afford to grace their tables, sideboards and mantels with the beautiful array of glittering crystal ware.

The art of making glass is very ancient. The demand, however, seems to be on the increase year by year.

Glass is composed of a mixture which comprises soda, sand, red lead and a few other ingredients. Sand forms the basis of the composition. The entire mixture when ready is placed in a huge melting pot, and under a terrific heat is melted into a white molten mass which resembles water and which will run as easily.

The pots are made of extra fine baked clay and arranged in a circle around the furnace, about twenty-four in number. The fire is kept up at a white heat throughout the working

season.

It requires about two days and nights for a pot of the mixture to melt to the proper stage for blowing purposes.

The "blowers" work around the circle from one pot to the next, or as fast as they are emptied. It is interesting to watch a blower as he approaches the fireplace, insert an iron pipe about five feet in length and gather a molten mass on the end which while cooling resembles molasses taffy, the girls like to make. Walking away from the awful heat toward a bench for the purpose, he blows slightly in the other end of the pipe, giving the mass a shape or body. Then with iron pinchers and scissors he begins to shape the article for which it is intended.

After much rolling, twisting and clipping one sees a beautifully formed vase, decanter, bowl, bottle or whatever shape is desired.

The famous Dorflinger plant at White Mills, Pa., was founded by Christian Dorflinger, who learned the trade of glass making in the famous plant in Alsace-Lorraine-The Cristalleries de St. Louis, founded in 1767, under Louis XV of France. The Dorflinger plant, known far and wide, supplies the greater part of the "blanks" used by the eight cut glass concerns in Honesdale, Pa. When a blank

first reaches a cutting shop it is taken to the "roughing room." Here a rough sketch of the pattern is traced from tissue paper pattern on to the article with red ink.

Then the lines are gone over and cut in with a sharp steel wheel or "mill," as it is called, upon which a stream of liquid sand is kept running from a hopper overhead. The article next goes to the "smoothing room," generally the floor above. Here each cut made by the rougher and which remains filled with sand is cut or smoothed by running it over a stone wheel, making the deep cuts, scallops and lines perfectly smooth, and also adding the fine, beautiful decorations and designs which the rougher would be unable to do.

While in the hands of the smoother water is kept running on the stone, which is of a very fine grade and must run perfectly smooth and true. Next the poor cut and mutilated article is taken to the "dipping room." Here it is covered on the inside with wax and paraffine and immersed in a tank of very strong and powerful eating acid for about thirty seconds. This eats out all the gray tint left by the smoother's stone. After its bath in the acid it becomes the beautiful, glittering thing seen in the show window.

So far the article has been entirely in the hands of men in its treatment, but to be finished and have its entire beauty revealed it must come in contact with the women, and under their gentle care and judgment receive its place and position.

After a very careful washing it is packed in heated sawdust to dry out all the tiny as well as the deep and heavy cuts and decorations The sawdust is then brushed from the cuts with a soft brush, which leaves the glass more beautiful and brilliant than ever.

After a minute and careful inspection to ascertain or detect any flaw or defection, the article is ready to be wrapped and labeled to be shipped and receive a good home after all its maltreatment, and there in the palace of some kind person show and display its beauty on the mantel, table, or sideboard in its own way of appreciation. Honesdale, where I live and work, is the home of the gold decorated tableware which, while not so well known and recognized as cut glass, is far superior in beauty and is much more expensive.

It is of great interest for us to know that

among the glassblowers at White Mills are a great many sons of old Mother Sweden and therefore, like us, good followers of Luther.

IF

F there is one thing which more than any other puzzles church workers to-day it is the plan, or perhaps it is the question of methods, by which the Church is to carry on its work with the youth. In our own communion, there are various forms of organization which have been designed to interest and educate the youth in religion and in the interests which the Church represents and carries on. Some of these organizations have been successful, in a measure, in their stated purposes. But others have failed, practically, and perhaps it is safe to say that none have succeeded to the degree which their founders and promoters planned or hoped. The very number of these organizations and their variety in purpose and plan seem to indicate lack of knowledge of the subject. From this fact it would appear that we are groping in the dark, striving for a purpose which is only dimly defined, and using plans and methods which may or may not be the correct ones. We are not sure of any of the points in our line of procedure.

As in all cases where this condition is found to prevail, the best thing to do in our case is to come to a full halt, take a review back to first principles, and use these principles as our foundation for a new superstructure. In practice, as well as in principle, then, what is the Church trying to do with and for the child? It starts him in the Sunday school, carries him through the catechetical class into full Church membership, and then builds him up in the faith through the regular worship of the congregation and the preaching of the Word. In late years the Church has discovered some weak spots in its system, which it has tried to strengthen by introducing other auxiliary organizations besides that of the Sunday school. Taking a broad and at the same time microscopical survey of the whole system, we see that the Church's purpose is to educate people in religion. Of course people are to work in and for the Church, or for the kingdom of God on earth, but even the service which they are allowed to perform is in itself a part of their education. Thus we see that the Church exists primarily for the

benefit of men and women and children. Now, are we making the Church live up to this purpose at all stages of its work? Is it not true, on the other hand, that we are making some of the Church's auxiliaries serve a transposed purpose?

We condemn to-day the father who requires his children to help support the family, unless dire necessity compels him to ask their help, and we are coming to consider that necessity a calamity and are working and legislating to prevent it. We even censure the man of means who deliberately forces his children to shorten their school period, or to include too large a proportion of the "practical" branches, in order to bring them the more quickly to the earning point. In other words, we are demanding that home and school shall both minister to the child-not the child to them. The question is not what the home needs, or what the school needs, but what the child needs. But in the Church what are we doing? Just reversing this order. We are building some of our organizations to get the most of certain service out of the children. Before he gets the lisp out of his speech we are asking the tot to carry home to his mother and father harassing tales about the sufferings of the "poor heathen." We flatter ourselves that we are "educating" him in missions. But deep down in our hearts we know that we are trying to get him to "save his pennies" for the missionary box. We are wheedling him into the trick of pumping out his unwilling father's pockets. Theoretically our missionary program for the children is educational, but if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the aim of this education is the development of the spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of others-education in giving, directly if not exclusively. For this program as now practised there is but one criticism. It is started at too early a day in the child's life. How can we reasonably expect a boy to enthuse in any normal or healthy way about carrying the Gospel to the heathen until he begins to feel and know for himself the value of the Gospel, and be able to comprehend in some measure

the loss which is sustained by the human who passes across life's stage without it? of course the missionary enthusiast can "work up" the boy to a point of burning interest. But after the boy "gets over it," in a few years, and regains his composure, unless some wise and well balanced teacher of religion has had his "innings" in the meantime, he loses his interest, turns his back upon the whole subject, and lapses into merely nominal church membership, or non-membership. The work for the missionary enthusiast is out among the grown men who have the money to give. The right teacher and leader for the boy is the man (not woman) who has the boy's life interests first in mind and then a good all-round knowledge of religion which he is able to hand on to others. The right person to work with the girl is the woman who is equipped after the same style as the man described above.

On one point, then, we are clear. The ques-, tion is not what the Church needs to have the children do, but it is what the children need to have the Church do for them. And the answer to this question is: The children need to have the Church give them a broad, deep, liberal, comprehensive education in religion. The plans now successfully at work in this process are mentioned earlier in this paper, those followed in the Sunday school, in the catechetical class, and in the public worship of the Church. But somewhere there is a weak spot in these plans, as is shown by the deflection from our church life of some of our strongest young men. These men seem devoted enough in early youth, but later they let go their hold upon the Church and religion. For this deflection there seems to be no reason except that their grip upon the principles or doctrines of the Christian religion was not strong enough.

Following our experience closely we discover that this deflection begins somewhere between the eleventh and the eighteenth years of the boy's life, generally toward the end of this period. And the loss has gone on in the face of our best efforts, so far, to prevent it. The organizations we have formed do not seem to have brought the needed drawing power to bear. Experience has proven that no organization of “one idea" contains sufficient attractive force, even though that idea were the strongest in the circle. Some had the greatest of hopes of the Junior Luther

League. As now constituted in most local circles, it has not proven a complete success. In some congregations it has shown considerable strength, but this has been where the original plans have been supplemented by additional features. This experience indicates our course. We need to study the efforts of those who have been most successful, and add to our plans such features as have helped to produce results in the hands of these workers.

In our judgment it is best to look everywhere for features that can be added or adapted. We have no sympathy with modern radical movements to secularize the Church, or even to have the Church bid for popular favor by any departure from her divinely appointed course. But we have come to understand the child and the youth better than we understood him twenty years ago. We know now that some things which seem secular to grown people are bound up in the child's religion. For instance, in the Boy Scout movement, which is pulling the boys out of the Church like a magnet pulls bits of steel out of the loose soil of Mother Earth, there are ideas which are linked up with religion in the boy's mind. These ideas the Church ought to have been using for years past. We propose a careful study of all the ideas that have shown strength, adopt or adapt those which are best suited to our purpose to fill out a comprehensive program, and supplement our methods with these ideas.

The task proposed is too big a one on which to divide. In the efforts to perform it women should not separate from men, synod should not work independently of synod. As yet we know too little about this work to admit of division on it without incurring great loss of time and effort. Each group needs the benefit of the others' investigation of facts and con ditions, and the advantage of the others' study of problems. Each needs the earliest and fullest possible information about the others' successes. Instead of working separately and taking a generation to get the right informa tion and get the result into general practice. let us join hands on it and try to get it into our practice in a ́ecade. Then in our own generation we shall have the satisfaction of seeing our youth growing up with the missionary spirit, not only, but in character so well rounded that they will promptly and liberally respond to all rightful demands of their fellowmen.

INCE the appearance of the Son of God

SINCE

in the fullness of time, the world has not beheld a more remarkable spectacle than the Reformation in Germany Like a mighty giant the great man of God, Luther, trod under 100t the hierarchical systems which for centuries had taken the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So rapid was the progress of the new movement that a Venetian in 1558 made the remark, that in Germany only one-tenth of the population had remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, while seven-tenths of them had embraced the Lutheran faith, and onetenth were to be found in different sects which

had sprung up. Is it then any wonder that the history of Europe during the 16th and the greater part of the 17th century is inseparably connected with the religious affairs of that period, that, as Schiller says in his History of the Thirty Years' War, "from the beginning of the religious wars in Germany to the peace of Munster scarcely anything great or remarkable occurred in the political world of Europe in which the Reformation had no. an important share?" Finally the climax of the momentous struggle was reached in the bloody war which for thirty years devastated the fertile fields of Europe, depopulated entire districts, left as its monuments the ruins of cities and innumerable graves.

The immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War is to be sought in the events which took place in Bohemia. Rudolph II. had become King of Bohemia in 1575. After a prolonged struggle he had been compelled to grant to his subjects religious liberty. After his death his brother Matthias became his successor in Bohemia. In order to secure the succession in Austria of the most powerful member of his family, the Archduke Ferdinand, the royal letter granted to the Protestants of Bohemia in 1609 was recognized However, soon afterward the Protestant church at Klostergrab was destroyed by the Catholics, and the church at Braunau closed. The Bohemians were enraged, the pledges which had been given to them had been violated. An armed mob went to the royal palace at Prague, seized two of the royal councilors, Slawata and Martinitz, and unceremoniously hurled them out of the window. "The Bohemians justified it as

a

national custom, and saw nothing remarkable in the whole affair, excepting that any one should have got up again safe and sound after such a fall. A dunghill, on which the imperial chancellors chanced to be deposited, had saved them from injury." This was the beginning of the bloody struggle which for thirty years convulsed Europe.

The war may be divided into two great periods. During the first period (1618-1629) the Catholics were successful. In Bohemia Ferdinand the Second literally tore up the royal letter which had granted religious liberty to the Bohemians, expelled the Protestant ministers, and called back the Jesuits. In Bohemia, Austria, and the Palatinate Protestantism was suppressed.

In the meantime Christian the Fourth of Denmark had been drawn into the struggle. The shameful treatment to which the Protestant States of Northern Germany had been subjected had aroused in Christian's heart the fear that soon not only religious but also political freedom might be endangered. In 1625 he advanced against the enemy. However, his forces were completely overcome and in 1629 he was compelled to sign the peace treaty of Lubeck, according to which he agreed not to interfere in the future in any way in the affairs of Germany. Ferdinand had now reached the highest heights of success, and relentlessly he used this power for the suppression of the hated Protestants. On March 6, 1629, he issued the Edict of Restitution which declared void the titles to all ecclesiastical property which the Protestants had acquired after 1552 and demanded that it should be turned over to imperial commissaries.

At this moment of greatest danger there appeared a man who had been destined to kindle the hearts of the discouraged Protestants with renewed zeal, Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden. It is true, that he was led partly by personal reasons, as he had been grossly insulted by Ferdinand, partly by political considerations, as he was eager to gain control of the Baltic, but undoubtedly religious considerations had the greatest weight with the noble Protestant Prince. Filled with burning religious zeal he called the sturdy sons of